Option to skip notification to subscribers when a ticket is updated

[Ryan Ollos <ryano@…>]

Consider the following scenarios for editing a ticket:

1. Changing a minor typo in the ticket Description
2. Adding some entries to the Keywords field
3. Changing the Milestone, Component, Type, etc ...
4. Adding an attachment, when the attachment was mentioned in the previous message, therefore all users can expect it will be posted to the ticket within minutes and don't need to see another email telling them an attachment was added.

Users on my team receive a lot of email from Trac each day, and it is frustrating and Trac becomes less effective when they receive email notifications when someone is just cleaning up or making some minor changes to a ticket.

Rather than setting up a lot of options in trac.ini that determine who and when a subscriber is notified of changes, I propose that a checkbox is added to the right of Submit Changes. When the Don't Notify Subscribers checkbox is selected, notifications emails are not sent on a ticket update.

The question then arises, what permission should be required for this checkbox to be present. Perhaps someone running a Trac instance does not want users to be able to change a ticket without, for instance, the ticket's owner receiving a notification. I propose two options for the [notification] section of trac.ini.

1. optional_notify_authenticated = {true, false}
2. optional_notify_anonymous = {true, false}

Option 1 would show/hide the Don't Notify Subscribers checkbox for authenticated users. Option 2 would show/hide the Don't Notify Subscribers checkbox for anonymous users. Users with TICKET_ADMIN permission would always see the checkbox.

[Ryan Ollos <ryano@…>]

Request-A-Hack on Track-Hacks.org:  #5495.

[jevans]

Alternatively perhaps add TICKET_CLEANUP and WIKI_CLEANUP permissions (or some such) to control access to the option. Personally I'd only allow it for minor text edits - I'd want notification of property changes. But yes, there have been times I haven't made minor corrections to avoid sending notification. Sounds like a great hack.

[cboos]

Sounds interesting, and in line with the discussion in #7758.

But if I may, we are more in need of an active maintainer for the notification subsystem than yet another tweak ;-)